Jubilee
by cinnamon badge
Summary: [DracoGinny] They are quiet people, the Malfoys. They do not care for noise or fuss, especially fuss over something as simple as a wedding anniversary.


**Author's Note: **Written for the 100quills challenge on lj. Prompt #69: quiet. Harry Potter is not mine.

Michael tapped his fork against his glass to silence the assembled guests. "Excuse me! Can I have everyone's attention please?"

"Take it easy, that's the good crystal," Draco said, and those nearest him laughed.

Once everyone had quieted down, and their eyes had all focused on the handsome young man at the front of the banquet room, Michael lowered his glass. "I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for coming," he said, his voice carrying easily. "It made my job of convincing my grandparents to have this ball even easier. Can't celebrate anything unless there are guests, and knowing them, they would have let this day go by without so much as a cake after supper."

Murmurs of agreement at this. Draco rolled his eyes and Ginny patted his hand, amused. "Because this is a very special day, for them and for all of us," Michael went on. "Ninety years ago today, my grandparents were wed by a man who was killed not an hour later, on a grassy slope in Scotland covered with the bodies of their closest friends and family. They thought they were about to die, and they might well have done." Michael's mother Anastasia, seated nearby, dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. "They survived, as we all know, but life has never been easy for them. They have fought for everything they have, and struggled through problems when many thought that they should just give up. They would be better off apart, many said." Michael chuckled. "I can only imagine what -- er, _gracious_ things my grandfather so _eloquently_ told them in response." This earned him a hearty laugh from everyone.

"So we have come together to celebrate not a marriage, but two people. My grandparents." Here even Michael, ever a stoic man, teared up, as did many other guests. "My wonderful, inspiring, strong, brave grandparents, who, ninety years after Harry Potter defeated Tom Riddle, sit before you today surrounded by their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, still together after everything life threw at them. I can only hope that me and my Emily will be together as happily for so long." He raised his glass again, and was followed by everyone else. "To my grandparents, Draco and Ginny Malfoy. Ninety years. May there be ninety more!"

"Here here!" the guests cheered, and drank to Michael's toast. At Draco and Ginny's table, their eldest son, Julian, stood up as soon as Michael had been seated again.

"Are we ever going to actually eat?" Draco said loudly. "I was promised supper and a nightcap before bed." More laughter.

"You hold your tongue, darling," Ginny said, slapping his wrist.

"I'll be brief, I promise, Dad," Julian said, winking at Ginny. "Well, Mike's pretty much covered everything, so all I have to say is this." He raised his glass in their direction, and looked directly into Ginny's eyes. "Thank you," he said solemnly. "I am only now, as a father and grandfather myself, coming to realize the hardships that you went through when we were young children. You protected us from all of that, and we all led happy, normal childhoods." Julian's four siblings all nodded tearily; Nicholas reached for and squeezed Ginny's hand. "I know you would rather we'd not put together this whole thing for your anniversary, but we needed to do at least this for you, when you have done so much for us. I love you both desperately, for everything you have given me, Nicholas, Elliot, Anastasia, and Connor. Thank you." Ginny was in tears by that point, and Julian lowered his face for her to kiss him fiercely on both cheeks. Draco clasped Julian's hand in both of his gnarled ones, and their simple eye contact spoke volumes.

"I'm overwhelmed," Ginny murmured to Draco, laying a hand on his arm. "I'd no idea..."

"Nor I," Draco said, covering her hand with his. "Reckon we did something right, love."

The house elves had begun serving by that point, and everyone was settling into their delicious meal. "Of course you did right by us, Dad," Nicholas spoke up. His brown eyes twinkled under his head of white hair. "I've only got a few scars --" Their table laughed.

"Well, maybe if you hadn't insisted on pushing your father's buttons all the time," Ginny said with mock severity, "he wouldn't have been so cross with you."

"You're not so old that I can't still thrash you, you know," Draco said.

"We learned quickly," Nicholas told their spouses; his wife Juliet grinned at him. "We soon found out that Connor had Dad wrapped around his little finger and could get anything he wanted. He became our spokesman."

"And Connor didn't abuse his power at all, did he?" Anastasia teased him, as everyone laughed.

The rest of the evening was spent reminiscing about their childhoods -- the various scraped knees and banged elbows, holidays to the seaside and the Continent, the arrival of their Hogwarts letters. They all reminded Ginny that she had cried for each and every one.

"I certainly did not," she huffed.

"Ah, but you did, Mum," Julian said. "I remember thinking that maybe someone had died, the way you carried on when I got mine."

"No, that was when Elliot pranked Dad and told him he'd been sent home because the Sorting Hat couldn't place him," Nicholas said. Elliot shrugged, smiling.

"I still can't believe you fell for that," Ginny said.

Draco frowned at her. "Malfoys do not play jokes on one another," he said pompously. Ginny laughed and kissed him.

"He's got some of the twins in him, that's for sure," she said.

"Elliot's enough by himself," Anastasia said. "I can't imagine there being two of him. Uncle George and Uncle Fred must've been certifiable!"

Draco saw the sadness in Ginny's eyes and squeezed her hand. She smiled up at him and squeezed back. It was still there, even underneath all of the layers of love and happiness and time that lay over it: the grief. Unending, insuppressible. George had been the one that married them -- they had counted on him for knowing the most random and seemingly useless spells and charms -- and not an hour later, he had died while trying to get Fred's body in the clear. Ginny had never forgotten that, nor had Draco. Their children had grown up with the stories of their amazing uncles, the only two they would never meet, and when Elliot's wife Tess had given birth to twins, they had tearfully told Ginny and Draco that they would be named Fred and George.

It was over dessert that Ginny told them about Laura, Julian's youngest daughter, the only family member that had been unable to make it to the party. "Laura sends her love to everyone," Ginny said, "and wants you all to know that she thinks she's met the man she's going to marry."

Julian looked up, surprised. "What? She didn't say a word to us."

Ginny chuckled. "I'm her gran, Jules. She tells me everything."

"Well, what does he do? What's he like? Does he have family?"

She looked sideways at Draco, who stared back at her curiously for a moment, then groaned. "Dear Merlin, woman," he cried, "are you really going to hold me to that bet?"

"You know I will," she sang.

"Your mother and I made a bet after Connor was born," Draco told them all.

"I said that with the Wizarding community being the size that it was back then, it was inevitable --"

"That one of our descendants would marry a Potter."

"Don't grind your teeth, Draco, you won't have them for much longer."

"A Potter!" Anastasia said. "I wonder which one?"

"James Turpin," Ginny said, "Harry's grandson. Harry's _favorite _grandson," she added. "He's the Keeper for Puddlemere United. Trained by the great Oliver Wood himself."

"No need to rub it in," Draco grumbled.

"So now your father owes me ten Galleons," Ginny finished gaily. "I'm expecting him to pay up tonight."

Draco gave her a sultry grin, and his hand slipped under the table. "I know other ways I could give you your winnings, Mrs. Malfoy," he murmured. Ginny giggled like a girl.

All five of their children instantly protested. "We can hear you, you know!" Elliot said.

"So sorry," Draco said. "Would you mind leaving, then?"

After dinner had been cleared away and the guests were nice and full, the house elves whisked away the tables, leaving the room wide open. A string quartet set up in the corner, and soon everyone had paired up and was dancing. Near the center of the room, Draco and Ginny moved slowly to the music, lost for a moment in the ghosts of the past.

"You really don't mind that Laura is involved with James Turpin, do you?" she asked, biting her lip.

"No," he said. "Not too much, at any rate. As long as he doesn't look like Potter."

Ginny smiled. "Spitting image of his father, I've been told," she said. "Blue eyes, reddish hair."

"Ah. So he looks like Ron instead. Even better."

She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. "How amusing you are," she said, "when you're trying to convince me that you still hate my family."

"Never could fool you, could I?"

"I give you points for effort, but no, you can't." She kissed him and gazed up at him adoringly. "Ninety years," she murmured.

"You don't look a day over seventy, love," Draco said with a wink.

"And that's supposed to make me feel better how?"

"Oh, you know. I have so many witches chasing after me these days, you should feel lucky I've decided to forego them all to stay with you."

"What's that? Sorry, all I heard was 'I'm going to be sleeping on the couch tonight, Ginny.'"

He chuckled and set his chin on top of her head. "But you know how bad my back is."

"I do. I like to think that I know everything about you."

"Oh really?"

"And even then, I learn something new about you every day."

Draco bent his head until their foreheads touched, and looked deeply into her eyes. "Amazing how that happens, isn't it?" he whispered.

Elliot and his wife Tess stood along the wall, watching his parents laugh and talk and dance together on the dance floor. "Do you see us in their place, on our ninetieth anniversary?" Tess asked, threading her fingers through his.

"I hope so," Elliot murmured, not tearing his gaze from them. His father was not an expressive man -- he was the butt of many family jokes for it -- but the way he looked at his wife was a humbling thing to see. Even now, the both of them over a hundred years old and gray and wrinkled, they were still madly in love with each other and it was written all over their faces. "We should go," he said.

Tess frowned. "What? Why?"

"They want to be alone." He waved at the rest of the room. "Look at them. We might as well not be here, for all they're aware of their surroundings."

"How romantic," she sighed. She took her husband's hand and they slipped quietly away.

Julian and his wife Rebecca were the next to go, while Draco and Ginny danced to a slow waltz, followed by some of the grandchildren and their spouses. The three great-grandchildren, too young to stay up much past ten o'clock, left with their parents next.

The house elves started dousing the lights after Michael and Emily left. Still Draco and Ginny danced, and the string quartet, shrugging to themselves, continued to play, slow, beautiful melodies that crept through the air like ribbons of sound.

The musicians finished up shortly after midnight, for they had only been secured for that long, and quietly packed up their instruments. A house elf met them at the banquet room door, and saw that they received their promised payment. They were thanked for their performance, and the violinist gave the elf their card, in case the Malfoys ever needed musical entertainment for another party.

"I is not thinking so, sirs," the elf said, her big eyes wide. "The Malfoys is quiet people. They is not liking lots of noise and fuss. But I is going to give the card to Master Michael, since he is liking parties very much." That was just fine by the quartet.

The cellist looked back one last time before they left the banquet room. There they still swayed, the Malfoys, to a tune that seemingly only they could hear. A single lamp had been left burning along the wall, leaving them alone in the dark, to dance their dance and dream of things past. And for a moment, the cellist could almost imagine what they must have been like years ago, when they were young and beautiful and in the first overwhelming throes of true love; when her hair had been red and his hands had been steady; when their children were small and the world was theirs.

The cellist smiled and closed the door behind her, and left them to their peace and quiet.


End file.
